A Day After Free Basics Gets Banned, Facebook’s India Head Steps Down

Facebook India Managing Director Kirthiga Reddy has stepped down from her post after a 6 year stint with the company. She was Facebook’s first employee in India and had set up Facebook’s Hyderabad office.

Reddy has MBA from Stanford University and MS in Computer Science from Syracuse University. Prior to joining Facebook in 2011, she’d had long stints in Motorola and Silicon Graphics.

In a Facebook post, Reddy says she will exit in 6-12 months and go back to the US.

When my family relocated to India, we knew that we would move back to the US some day. It’s a bittersweet moment to…

Facebook has been in the eye of a storm over the last few months over its controversial Free Basics proposal. It had pumped Rs. 300 crore into a marketing campaign to promote its service, but TRAI had ruled against it and effectively declared Free Basics illegal. Facebook had withdrawn Free Basics a day later.

Facebook’s conduct had been severely criticized by India’s telecom regulatory body TRAI, who had said that its attempt to garner support for Free Basics on Facebook was converting the debate into a “crudely majoritarian opinion poll”.